When
you think about hotbeds of socialism, Texas is not the first place that
comes to mind. However, according to a CBS News/YouGov poll last month,
56% of Democratic primary voters in the Lone Star state say they have a positive view of socialism
while only 37% have a favourable view of capitalism. It is a similar
story in California; more Democrats feel positive about socialism than
about capitalism.
Does this mean the two
most populous states in the US are ready to embrace revolution? No. But
this poll reflects a couple of hugely important shifts in the US’s
political landscape and national psyche.
First, there is Texas’s move to the left. The traditionally Republican state has become notably less conservative in recent years thanks to a growing Hispanic population and the migration of young, out-of-state liberals to its growing tech industry. Texas is predicted to be far more competitive in the general election than it has been in the past;
it won’t be easy, but it is no longer implausible that the state will
turn blue. Whether Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders has a better chance of
making that happen, however, is hotly contested.
More
broadly, the poll reflects a step-change in US attitudes towards
capitalism. It would be inaccurate to say that the US is embracing
“socialism”, because the word has become amorphous:
boomers associate it with Stalinism, millennials associate it with
Scandinavia. In many ways, the S-word is a red herring. The country has
not so much warmed to socialism as it has cooled on capitalism. This is
hardly surprising when you consider how the latter has failed ordinary
Americans. The poorest men in the US have the same life expectancy as men in Sudan. Maternal mortality more than doubled between 1991 and 2014. The middle class has shrunk. People are desperate for an alternative to an increasingly dismal status quo.
Capitalism
is central to the US’s national identity; conservatives view the
country’s move towards socialism, as personified in the rise of Sanders,
as nothing short of an existential crisis. “America v socialism” was the official theme of this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference
(CPAC), an annual gathering of US conservatives. “Our view is it’s not
capitalism versus socialism, because socialism isn’t just about
economics,” a CPAC organiser told attendees earlier this week.
“Socialism … gets to the very core of violating the dignity of the
individual human being that has God-given rights. And that’s got us
pretty fired up.”
Centrist Democrats are
equally fired up. They see Sanders’ success as an existential threat to
the party and are fighting harder to defeat him than they are to defeat
Donald Trump. The polls may suggest the US is ready for a president who
calls himself a democratic socialist, but the establishment clearly
thinks otherwise. Parallels have been drawn with George McGovern,
a senator who advocated for universal health care, railed against
corporations and had enthusiastic support from the young. McGovern beat
the odds and won the Democratic nomination in 1972; he lost the general
election to Richard Nixon in a landslide. Parallels have also been drawn with Jeremy Corbyn. We all know how that turned out.
I am not sure there is much to be gained by these comparisons. For one, income inequality in the US was far lower in the 70s
than it is now. Also, Sanders does not have Brexit complicating
matters. But if we are going to invoke cautionary historical precedents,
why not look at 2016, when Hillary Clinton, the most centrist of
centrists, could not beat Trump? Honestly, I don’t know if the US is
ready for a socialist president, but it may be more ready than it has
been before.
This article originally appeared in the Guardian on April 24, 2019, as part of the Guardian series on Broken Capitalism.
Before capitalism, there was work. Before markets, before even
money, there was work. Our remotest ancestors, hunting and gathering,
almost certainly did not see work as a separate, compartmentalized part
of life in the way we do today. But we have always had to work to live.
Even in the 21st century, we strive through work for the means to live,
hence the campaign for a “living wage”.
As a species, we like to define ourselves through our thoughts and
wisdom, as Homo sapiens. But we could as easily do so through the way we
consciously apply effort towards certain goals, by our work – as Homo
laborans. It nonetheless took two revolutions, one agricultural, one
industrial, to turn “work” into its own category.
Industrial capitalism sliced and diced human time into clearly
demarcated chunks, of “work” and “leisure”. Work was then bundled and
packaged into one of the most important inventions of the modern era: a
job. From this point on, the workers’ fight was for a job that delivered
maximum benefits, especially in terms of wages, in return for minimum
costs imposed on the worker, especially in terms of time.
For Karl Marx, the whole capitalist system was ineluctably rigged
against workers. Whatever the short-run victories of the trade unions,
the capitalist retained the power; the ultimate control, over workers’
time. And the worker would remain forever alienated from their work. The
goal was to assert sovereignty over our own time, free of the temporal
control of the capitalist, able “to hunt in the morning, fish in the
afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner”.
The problem of alienation is far from solved. Only one in three
American workers say they feel “engaged” with their work. But in terms
of material conditions of life, across the broad sweep of economic
history, capitalism has delivered pretty well for most workers. Wages
rose, hours fell, life (mostly) got better. Global poverty halved. As an
economic system, socialism fell from grace, and, by and large, and in
spite of recent rhetoric on the American political left, continues to
fall.
There are many variants of capitalism, of course, from welfarist
Scandinavia through Anglo-Saxon laissez-faire to Chinese market statism.
But the trend seemed pretty clear. Capitalism works. And it works, most
importantly, for workers.
But now? Over the last decade, the logic of markets and the
workings of capitalism have been intensely questioned and challenged,
both from the populist right and the socialist left. Young Americans and
supporters of the Democratic party are now more enthusiastic about
socialism than capitalism (by 6% and 10% margins, respectively). Leading
candidates now proudly describe themselves as socialists – unthinkable
just a few years ago. (Whether they are in fact socialists by any
sensible definition of the term is of course another matter.)
Future history books may begin the chapter on the current era with
the events of 15 September 2008, when Lehman Brothers filed for the
biggest bankruptcy in history, with $639bn in assets and $619bn in debt.
Or perhaps the starting date will be three years later, when on 17
September 2011, two years after the official end of the recession,
hundreds of protesters gathered in Manhattan’s Zuccoti Park to “Occupy
Wall Street”. Or 8 November 2016, when Donald Trump ascended to the
highest office in the land. It all depends whether, in hindsight, our
crisis comes to be seen as economic or political in nature.
Certainly, the Great Recession was a massive economic shock. Nine
million jobs were lost and 4m homes foreclosed on. Average household
income dropped by 7%. Black families saw their already limited wealth
stock cut almost in half. And the recovery has been painfully slow, in
what some economists have labeled a “zombie economy”.
But the Great Recession also shone a light on trends long
predating the downturn, not least in terms of stagnant wage growth for
so many workers. By comparison with the postwar years, economic growth
has been slow for the last few decades. At the same time, the
transmission mechanism linking economic growth to the wages of workers
appears to have broken. The share of income going to workers has dropped
sharply, from 64% in 1974 to 57% in 2017.
Labor Share of Income
In the last few years, as the zombie gradually wakes up, household
incomes and wages have begun to nudge upwards – but families are still having to work more hours to get the income they need.
Women are working more, and earning more (though the pay gap remains).
But as men work less, and earn less, many families are simply standing
still in economic terms. Since 1979, the median male wage in the US has dropped
by 1.4% for whites– and by 9% and 8% for black and Hispanic men,
respectively. Workers at the top of the earnings and education
distribution have seen their paychecks continue to fatten: not so on the
middle and bottom rungs of the labor market. Wage growth remains torpid
in the middle of the distribution.
Why? Why, for so many for middle-class and working-class
Americans has “economic growth become a spectator sport”, as the liberal
economist Jared Bernstein memorably put it.
There are two competing explanations for what happened to tear the
connective tissue between growth and wages: the Productivity Story and
the Power Story. The productivity story goes as follows: wages reflect
the productivity of the worker; the modern economy rewards skills more
than in the past; and lots of people have not upskilled quickly enough.
Under the wonky label “skills-biased technological change”, this view
prevailed across most of the political spectrum well into this century.
Free markets could deliver fair-enough outcomes, so long as everyone got
the education and training they needed. “Lifelong learning” became the
mantra of all, and the cliched answer from politicians and scholars to
the deepening problem of inequality.
There are two problems with this story. First, the necessary
investments in education and training were never actually made.
Community colleges, the most common post-secondary destination for
students from families in the bottom 80% of the income distribution, are
underfunded, overstretched and largely ignored by the policy elite.
Lifelong learning never made it from the thinktank policy briefs and
Davos panels to the real lives of real people.
The second problem is that productivity turns out to be only
part of the story – and perhaps not even the most important part. It is
certainly wrong to claim that there is no relationship at all between
productivity growth and wage growth. But the connection has certainly
become less clear over time, and harder to square with the trends in
wage inequality.
Even the strongest and most thoughtful proponents of the Productivity
Story, such as Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at
the American Enterprise Institute, concede that it is but one element. As Strain writes,
“it is most useful to think of wages as being determined by a
combination of competitive market forces, bargaining power, and
institutions”.
The Power Story is that wages do not reflect the productivity of the
worker, but their power. Lower wages are a reflection of growing
powerlessness, the result of four intersecting trends. First, unions
have become almost mythical creatures, unicorns of the labor market.
Just one in 20 workers in the US private sector are members of a trade
union, down from more than one in four in the 1950s. Sometime around
1980, US businesses declared war on unions, and won.
Second, the wage gap between similarly qualified workers in different
companies has widened. One widely cited study finds that one-third of
the increase in the earnings gap from 1978 to 2013 occurred within firms, while two-thirds of the rise occurred between firms.
It is the market power of one firm versus another that determines
wages, rather than the power of a particular employer versus its
workers. Even if workers can get organized, they cannot force a
completely different employer to share more of their surplus with them.
(Now that would be socialism.)
Third, market power has become increasingly
concentrated into fewer, larger companies, especially in terms of power
in the labor market. The dangers of monopoly power in market economies
are well known, and the push for strong anti-trust laws has historically
united the pro-market right and the progressive left. In recent years
the threat of monopsony power (ie a dominant single buyer), not least in
employment, has risen. Amazon is the poster child of monopsony power.
But in many towns, a single hospital might be the biggest employer, and
the sole employer of nurses, for example. Hard in these circumstances
for workers to negotiate better pay and conditions
Fourth, the labor market is not as tight as it looks. There is a
still a large “reserve army” of workers, serving to hold wages down.
This may not be what the headline unemployment rate – now down to 4% –
is telling us. But the headline rate tells us less than in the past,
because millions of workers have dropped out altogether, and so are not
counted in the unemployment statistics. The chances of a “prime age” man
being in paid work has dropped by eight percentage points in the
postwar decades. For most of this period, women’s employment rates were increasing – but, in the US at least, that rise stopped abruptly around the turn of the century, and has actually edged down slightly. Black, Hispanic and less-educated adults have all seen the sharpest drops in participation.
Prime-Age Male Labor Force Participation by Race and Ethnicity
This powerlessness of workers in specific companies has fueled calls for higher minimum wages. At a federal level, the value of the wage floor has dropped by 46% since 1968. Seminal scholarship from David Card and the late, great, Alan Krueger helped to allay fears about
negative economic consequences of a higher minimum wage. But a big
challenge here is that the gap between richer and poorer places has also
grown. A $15 minimum wage may make perfect sense in Boston (median wage
= $24.16 an hour). But perhaps not in Brownsville, Texas (median wage = $11.59). Half of US workers earn less than $18.58 per hour.
A worker without power is one with a lighter paycheck. They may also
suffer greater indignities or disrespect in the course of daily working
life. James Bloodworth’s Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage
Britain describes the loss of dignity faced by Amazon warehouse
employees and Uber drivers. Horror stories abound of workers under
constant surveillance, unable to take bathroom breaks and so resorting
to adult diapers, or bullied or harassed by bosses or other workers. In
2011, the Morning Call of Allentown, Pennsylvania, reported that
managers at the local Amazon warehouse refused to open the doors for
ventilation despite soaring temperatures. They put ambulances outside
instead, for the workers who collapsed.
Vivid stuff, and no doubt true in the particular. But it is important
to note that it is not the general experience of most workers. The
proportion of Americans reporting that they were “treated with respect
at work” has held steady at around 92% since 2002, according to the General Social Survey.
For some critics of capitalism, workers lost the power struggle right
at the outset. As Marx (Groucho, this time, not Karl) once put it,
“What makes wage slaves? Wages!”
Whatever material gains workers managed to achieve came at the price
of a profound loss of sovereignty. In her book Private Government: How
Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk about It), philosopher
Elizabeth Anderson argues that CEOs are the new totalitarians, who
“think of themselves as libertarian individualists”, while acting in
practice as “dictators of little communist governments”. We imagine
ourselves free but effectively barter our freedom away in exchange for
pay, effectively handing over our passports as we punch in.
What most people want is a job that pays a decent wage and offers
both some satisfaction and security. The harsher critics of the system,
like Anderson, believe that these goals are incompatible at a deep level
with capitalist dynamics. But at least for some, especially for white
men, market capitalism delivered pretty well for at least a generation.
This is why it was so important to fight to crowbar the doors open for
women and people of color. The progressive goal was not to curtail the
market, but to open it.
In very recent historical time, the general direction of history
seemed to be towards capitalism of one kind or another. In the sliver of
time between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of Lehman
Brothers, it seemed like markets embedded in liberal democracies were
the preordained future. Fukuyama declared the End of History.
Scholars adopted the term “late capitalism” to describe the trends
towards service-led economies and increasingly flexible working
arrangements (flexible, that is, for the employer). But with the
dislocation, insecurity and inequality witnessed over the last decade,
it is hard to disagree with the narrator of Adam Thirlwell’s novel Lurid
and Cute, who exclaims of capitalism: “‘Late? It had only just got
started!”
American capitalism is failing Trump's base as white working-class 'deaths of despair' rise
The astronomical costs of health care are draining jobs, hope and opportunity from working-class Americans.
Coal miners wave signs during a Donald Trump rally in Charleston, W.Va., on May 5, 2016.Steve Helber / AP file
By Anne Case and Angus Deaton
Free-market
capitalism has brought progress throughout history. It has lifted
millions of people out of poverty around the world. But it is not
working for less educated Americans today. While those with four-year
college degrees have prospered over the last half-century, those without
have seen their wages fall, their communities and marriages weakened
and their labor markets turn against them, and worst of all, they have
experienced an epidemic of what we christeneddeaths of despair, from suicide, drug overdose and alcoholic liver disease and cirrhosis. In 2018, more than 158,000 Americans died from these causes, up from 65,000 in 1995, with increases that are similar for men and women.
Free-market
capitalism has brought progress throughout history. It has lifted
millions of people out of poverty around the world. But it is not
working for less educated Americans today.
Life expectancy at birth, often a good measure of social progress, saw a remarkable increase in the 20th century. But from 2013 to 2017, life expectancy fell for white Americans, and from 2014 to 2017, it fell for all
Americans, a setback that had not been seen since the influenza
pandemic a century earlier. We do not know how many deaths there will be from the coronavirus, but it is possible that life expectancy will fall again from 2019 to 2020.
In our book, we document many
worrying trends for less educated whites. They have been reporting
marked increases in pain, both physical and mental, as well as increased
difficulties socializing and in carrying out the normal activities of
life. Their marriage rates have fallen, while out-of-wedlock
childbearing has increased dramatically. Couples serially cohabit, in
fragile and often temporary relationships, so that many of their
children are living with adults who are not their birth parents, and
many middle-age men find themselves estranged from their children, who
are living with other men. Church attendance is falling along with union membership;
both are (or were) pillars of community. Behind this social decay lies a
slow and prolonged decline in earnings and job opportunities for less
educated men.
Our
calculations show that wages for men without college degrees are lower
now than they were half a century ago. In good economic times, wages
rise, but when the economy falters, wages resume their decline and never
return to their previous peak. Employment follows the same pattern. The
fraction of the population in work rises with the economy, then falls
back as people lose their jobs, with each peak and trough lower than the
previous ones.
When they lose their jobs, people look
around for other work, and many find it, though often not in jobs as
good as the ones they lost. Few corporations still hire their own
cleaning staffs, food service workers, drivers or security people.
Instead, they outsource or turn to gig workers,
saving themselves money but destroying the career jobs that could be
sources of meaning and hope for the future. Some workers choose not to
take the outsourced jobs and stay out of the labor force, and the fraction of men in employment has trended down
for decades. For many years, the labor force participation of women
without college degrees rose, but it stopped rising after 2000 and has
been on the same downward ratchet since then.
Why
are these terrible things happening? The familiar forces of
globalization and technical change are part of the story. Factories have
moved out of the country, and goods that used to be made at home are
being imported from China or Mexico. Manufacturing makes as much or more
stuff than before, but with many fewer workers. Yet these forces are
not peculiar to the United States; German, French and British workers
also have to deal with robots and with foreign competition. Less skilled
workers are having a tough time in all wealthy countries, and in many
they are making poor or no progress in earnings. But only the U.S. has seen more than a half-century of wage decline for its less educated workers, and only the U.S. is showing the huge epidemic of deaths of despair.
American
health care is different from health care in other countries. Pharma
companies were permitted to flood the market with opioids, targeted to
areas of industrial decline and despair, and to become immensely wealthy
through addiction and death; they bear much of the responsibility for
the epidemic of deaths of despair. No other country allowed this to
happen.
Beyond that, American health care is immensely expensive, consuming several percentage points more of gross domestic product than in Switzerland,
the second most expensive country in the developed world. That excess
is equivalent to a tribute of more than $8,000 paid by each household to
the industry, 50 percent more than the total cost of the military. Much
of this is paid by employers; in 2019, the average family policy cost
close to $21,000, and the average single policy cost $7,200
. This has to be paid by companies out of their wage costs, which is
close to impossible for low-skilled workers. So companies shed these
jobs to outsourcers or do without altogether. State governments have no
control over their rapidly rising Medicaid obligations and have cut their funding for — and raised tuition at
— state colleges and universities, which have in the past been a source
of hope and upward mobility for less privileged Americans.
Our
story is about the working class in general, but at least until 2013,
deaths of despair were mostly among whites. Yet our story is remarkably
similar to the story of joblessness, family disintegration and addiction
among African Americans in the 1970s. Capitalism in America is turning
against its least educated workers, and African Americans were first in
line.
The
astronomical costs of health care are draining jobs, hope and
opportunity from working-class Americans. We are in favor of free-market
capitalism, but economists have known for half a century that free
markets cannot deliver health care, and American health care is more
like a predatory conspiracy aided and abetted by government. It is no
accident that the industry has five lobbyists in Washington for every
member of Congress. How health care performs in dealing with the
coronavirus will certainly affect whether this situation is allowed to
continue.
Nessuna intromissione politica, solo osservazioni e qualche pensiero personale. Massimo D'Alema
torna a parlare del mondo del palazzo in un momento cruciale per il
governo, alle prese con le minacce e gli ultimatum di Italia Viva che
tra qualche giorno potrebbe staccare la spina e decretare ufficialmente
la fine dell'esperienza giallorossa.
Un'ipotesi a cui però lo storico esponente del Partito comunista italiano non crede: "Conviene a tutti, vedrete che presto si tornerà a parlare d’altro". Scommette quindi che l'allarme in un modo o nell'altro rientrerà, senza far traballare la poltrana del premier Giuseppe Conte.
A proposito, l'ex presidente del Consiglio ha alzato gli scudi in difesa dell'avvocato che rischia di essere travolto dal rimpasto ed
essere sostituito a Palazzo Chigi. Ma anche su questa ipotesi "Baffino"
si è detto piuttosto scettico, convinto che comunque Matteo Renzi non
riuscirà a trovare alcuna sponda nel suo piano per arginare Conte: "Non credo che possa passare per la mente di nessuno l’idea di mandare via da Palazzo Chigi l’uomo più popolare del Paese per fare un favore a quello più impopolare".
Un ritorno in campo?
La
domanda che ci si pone è la seguente: come si esce da questa situazione
di totale immobilismo e di forti tensioni? D'Alema non entra nel
merito, ma si limita a elogiare Goffredo Bettini - esponente del Partito democratico - che potrebbe diventare sottosegretario alla Presidenza del Consiglio: "È
uno serio e responsabile. Per fortuna a cercare una soluzione ci sono
uomini come lui e come Roberto Speranza, il difensore della salute degli
italiani".
Circola voce che l'ex premier sia tra i consiglieri più ascoltati di Conte, ma ha voluto mettere subito le mani avanti: "Per carità, se Renzi pensasse che c’entro qualcosa nelle discussioni di queste ore la situazione non potrebbe che peggiorare". Anche perché, come ha rivelato nel colloquio con La Repubblica, è impegnato sia per il convegno con cui il 21 gennaio si celebreranno i cento anni del Partito comunista italiano sia per la preparazione di un seminario a Mosca sulla escalation della tensione nei rapporti tra Russia e Ue: "Una cosa grossa, mi attendono alla commissione Esteri della Duma". E quindi respinge le possibilità di un ritorno in campo in prima persona: "Io ormai faccio il professore e il consulente, lo sanno tutti, per il mio lavoro andrò presto in Africa".
L’ambasciatore statunitense Eisenberg è
salito al Quirinale per congedarsi con il presidente Mattarella. Una
visita che ribadisce come ormai, in questa situazione politica così
fluida, il punto di riferimento in Italia per l’establishment americano
sia il Colle
“Un onore e un piacere incontrare il presidente Sergio Mattarella
al Quirinale. Apprezziamo profondamente la sua leadership e il suo
fermo sostegno alle relazioni tra Italia e Stati Uniti”. A dichiararlo via Twitter è l’ambasciatore statunitense a Roma, Lewis Michael Eisenberg, che, come recita la nota della presidenza della Repubblica, era “in visita di congedo”.
In questo marasma politico italiano, il Quirinale si conferma l’unico
elemento di certezza per l’establishment statunitense, di cui
l’ambasciatore Eisenberg è un valido rappresentante.
Da Washington, infatti, si guarda con rispetto e attenzione al Colle. Una consuetudine nata sotto le presidenze di Sandro Pertini e Francesco Cossiga, rafforzatasi con la fine della Prima repubblica e l’uscita di scena di figure come Giulio Andreotti e Giuliano Amato, diventata quasi prassi dopo le esperienze a Palazzo Chigi di Silvio Berlusconi e Romano Prodi che hanno lasciato spazio all’attuale situazione politica contraddistinta da una grande fluidità.
Basti pensare agli ottimi rapporti con gli Stati Uniti che ha avuto l’ex presidente della Repubblica Giorgio Napolitano.
Il feeeling tra Washington e Colle si è poi confermato anche con il suo
successore, Sergio Mattarella, già ministro della Difesa e
vicepresidente del Consiglio con delega ai servizi segreti durante il
primo governo di Massimo D’Alema. Nell’ottobre del 2019
l’attuale inquilino del Colle è stato ricevuto con grandi attenzioni
alla Casa Bianca dal presidente statunitense Donald Trump.
L’establishment d’oltreoceano sembra aver ben compreso come i
presidenti del Consiglio siano figure a tempo determinato. Così, quello
del Quirinale è diventato il vero numero di telefono italiano da
comporre quando c’è un problema — Un esempio? Il Memorandum d’intesa
sulla Via della Seta firmato con la Cina nel marzo del 2019.
L’incontro odierno non fa che confermarlo. Chiunque ci sia alla Casa Bianca — il repubblicano Trump o il democratico Joe Biden
— questi è molto poco interessato a chi viene scelto a Palazzo Chigi.
Tutta l’attenzione, invece, è rivolta ogni sette anni a chi si insedierà
al Quirinale. Non c’è dubbio quindi che gli uomini (e le donne) dello
staff del presidente eletto stiano guardando con interesse non eccessivo
l’attuale crisi del governo Conte. Ben più attenti saranno fra qualche
mese quando si deciderà il futuro inquilino del Colle. E dalle parti di
Washington, pur volendo restare sempre osservatori attenti ma neutrali,
sanno riconoscere bene gli interlocutori seri da quelli occasionali. Il
saluto di Eisenberg a Mattarella lo prova una volta di più.
Il
premier è terrorizzato dall’idea di ridiscutere daccapo tutti i
ministeri, punta a un semplice rimpasto senza crisi formale ed è pronto a
delegare l’intelligence a un suo fedelissimo
Roberto Monaldo / LaPresse
«La
notizia è che Conte ha smesso di scimiottare un drago, come fece nella
conferenza stampa di fine anno, ed è ridiventato camaleonte e tratta,
media, sopisce. Quindi la trattativa è aperta, ma è condotta con una
certa nebulosità da Zingaretti, tant’è che anche al vertice abbiamo la
sensazione che non sia chiaro dove andiamo a parare». È palpabile,
nell’atteggiamento e nelle parole dell’alto esponente del Partito
democratico che si è aperto con Linkiesta in forma anonima, il disagio
per le incertezze della dirigenza del Pd nel gestire la crisi.
Nebulosità che diventa fitta nebbia sul tema ormai scottante della
gestione politica dei Servizi e quindi della Autorità Delegata.
Innanzitutto,
Conte con il suo solto animo da cunctator, da temporeggiatore, non ha
ancora aderito alla ipotesi privilegiata dal Partito democratico: sue
dimissioni nelle mani di Mattarella con contemporanea dichiarazione
della piena disponibilità dei tre partiti della sua maggioranza di dare
vita ad un nuovo esecutivo. Questo permetterebbe al Presidente di aprire
la crisi formale ma anche di indire consultazioni lampo e di dargli
rapidamente un mandato per un Conte ter. Quindi, tavolo di trattative in
tempi strettissimi su programma e organigramma dei ministri.
Ma
in realtà Conte è letteralmente nel panico di fronte alla prospettiva
di dover ridiscutere tutti i dicasteri e gli equilibri. Panico acuito
dal palese stato confusionale del suo partito di riferimento, i
Cinquestelle, che vive le sue dimissioni e l’apertura di una crisi
formale quasi come una deminutio della sua autorità politica, sulla quale si è fatto molte illusioni, dopo 18 mesi di arrendevolezza di Nicola Zingaretti e di smodati complimenti di Goffredo Bettini.
Quindi
Conte si aggrappa con forza al diverso scenario di un rimpasto di
governo – ovviamente con un passaggio parlamentare – ma senza apertura
formale di una crisi. Sostanzialmente un cambiamento soft di alcune
caselle che depotenzi le forti spinte destabilizzanti che Matteo Renzi
sta dimostrando di ben sapere indirizzare.
Nell’un
caso, crisi formalizzata, come nell’altro, rimpasto senza crisi, pesa
la vincolante volontà comunicata informalmente, ma autorevolmente da
Sergio Mattarella di non toccare due dicasteri chiave: la Difesa a
Lorenzo Guerini, per non fare l’ennesima figura dei “soliti italiani” in
sede Nato in una fase nella quale si decide il prossimo Segretario
Generale (nomina che sarà fatta nel 2022, ma che si deciderà entro il
2021), e l’Interno a Luciana Lamorgese.
Dopo
gli exploit turbolenti di Matteo Salvini nel gestire il Viminale, il
Presidente preferirebbe infatti mantenere una supervisione morale e
politica su questo fondamentale dicastero. Ma naturalmente il Presidente
non farà della conferma della Lamorgese un ostacolo a eventuali
equilibri trovati dalla maggioranza.
Il
Pd però, confuso com’è, ci dice sempre la nostra fonte, pare non
trovare il coraggio per pretendere il Viminale che Marco Minniti ha
dimostrato che possono funzionare come una vice presidenza del Consiglio
e sconfinare apertamente nelle competenze della Farnesina nelle crisi
in atto nel Mediterraneo.
Date
per scontate le poltrone traballanti di tutte le ministre del Pd e dei
Cinquestelle, resta tesissima e apertissima la questione della direzione
politica dei Servizi.
«Conte
ha dovuto fare una poco gloriosa e un poco fantozziana marcia indietro
sull’Agenzia per la Cyber Security e ha cancellato i 2,5 miliardi di
finanziamento dal Recovery Fund. Ma mostra sempre di voler tenere duro
sulla Autorità Delegata. E incredibilmente Zingaretti continua a non
capirne il rilievo, dimenticandosi di una spasmodica attenzione del
Pci-Pds-Ds-Pd al settore, dai tempi di Pecchioli in poi. Quindi –
continua il nostro interlocutore del Pd – non stiamo chiedendo a gran
voce l’Autorità Delegata per noi (candidato in pole: Emanuele Fiano, ma
c’è chi avanza la candidatura di Guerini, che però verrebbe
sottodimensionato), ma se non avremo l’Interno, sicuramente obbligheremo
il segretario a pretenderla».
Resta
quindi aperta la strada, indicata sia da Renzi che da Pierferdinando
Casini, di una delega di Conte per la gestione politica dei Servizi a un
suo fidatissimo collaboratore e qui si fanno ormai apertamente i nomi
di Alessandro Goracci e Roberto Chieppa, rispettivamente capo di
gabinetto e segretario generale della presidenza del Consiglio.
Extraordinary warning to Trump by 10 former Pentagon chiefs
“The time for questioning the results has passed,” they wrote.
/
/ Source: Associated Press
By The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — In an extraordinary rebuke of President Donald Trump,
all 10 living former secretaries of defense are cautioning against any
move to involve the military in pursuing claims of election fraud,
arguing that it would take the country into “dangerous, unlawful and
unconstitutional territory.”
The 10 men, both Democrats and Republicans, signed on to an opinion article published Sunday in The Washington Post that
implicitly questioned Trump's willingness to follow his Constitutional
duty to peacefully relinquish power on Jan. 20. Following the Nov. 3
election and subsequentor recounts in some states, as well as
unsuccessful court challenges, the outcome is clear, they wrote, while
not specifying Trump in the article.
“The
time for questioning the results has passed; the time for the formal
counting of the electoral college votes, as prescribed in the
Constitution and statute, has arrived,” they wrote.
The former Pentagon chiefs warned against use of the military in any effort to change the outcome.
“Efforts
to involve the U.S. armed forces in resolving election disputes would
take us into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory,” they
wrote. “Civilian and military officials who direct or carry out such
measures would be accountable, including potentially facing criminal
penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic.”
The
opinion article was signed by Dick Cheney, William Perry, Donald
Rumsfeld, William Cohen, Robert Gates, Leon Panetta, Chuck Hagel, Ash
Carter, James Mattis and Mark Esper. Mattis was Trump's first defense
secretary; he resigned in 2018 and was succeeded by Esper, who was fired
just days after the Nov. 3 election.
A number of senior military officers, including Gen. Mark Milley,
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have said publicly in recent
weeks that the military has no role in determining the outcome of U.S.
elections and that their loyalty is to the Constitution, not to an
individual leader or a political party.
The 10 former
Pentagon leaders also warned in their Post article of the dangers of
impeding a full and smooth transition at Defense Department prior to
Inauguration Day as part of a transfer to power to President-elect Joe
Biden. Biden has complained of efforts by Trump-appointed Pentagon
officials to obstruct the transition.
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Without
mentioning a specific example, the former defense secretaries wrote
that transfers of power “often occur at times of international
uncertainty about U.S. national security policy and posture,” adding,
“They can be a moment when the nation is vulnerable to actions by
adversaries seeking to take advantage of the situation.”
Tensions
with Iran represent just such a moment. Sunday marked one year since
the U.S. killing of Qassem Soleimani, the top Iranian general; Iran has
vowed to avenge the killing, and U.S. officials said in recent days that
they are on heightened alert for potential Iranian attack on U.S.
forces or interests in the Middle East.
In a further sign
of U.S.-Iranian tension, the acting secretary of defense, Christopher
Milller, announced Sunday evening that he has changed his mind about
sending the Navy aircraft carrier, the USS Nimitz, home from the Middle
East and instead will keep the vessel on duty. Just last week, Miller
announced that he was sending the Nimitz home, a decision that had been
opposed by senior military officers.
In reversing
himself, Miller cited “recent threats issued by Iranian leaders against
President Trump and other U.S. government officials.” He did not
elaborate, and the Pentagon did not respond to questions.
The
Post reported that the idea for writing the opinion piece began with a
conversation between Cheney and Eric Edelman, a retired ambassador and
former senior Pentagon official, about how Trump might seek to use the
military in coming days.
